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Dutch Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made from cauliflower, green tomatoes, onions, sugar, mustard, turmeric, flour, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 514 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dutch Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut up the cauliflower and green tomatoes, then sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let sit overnight.

  2. The next morning, drain the vegetables and add the cut onions.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, mustard, turmeric powder, and flour to create a paste, wetting it with some of the vinegar.

  2. Boil the vegetables briefly, then add the paste and the remaining vinegar.

  3. Continue boiling until the mixture is done.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the chow-chow and gives it a firm, crisp-tender texture after cooking.
Green tomatoes
Adds tartness and body, and their pectin helps the mixture thicken as it cooks.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar liquid into a smooth, rich sauce when cooked.
Mustard
Adds pungent heat and flavor that carries through the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the paste with some vinegar before adding it. Dry flour and mustard clump if added straight to hot liquid. Wetting them first into a smooth paste lets the flour disperse evenly so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, onion, sugar, mustard, turmeric, flour, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, onion, sugar, mustard, turmeric, flour, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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